In 1915, well past his prime, Johnson traveled to Cuba to fight young, towering Jess Willard, who restored white honor by decking Johnson in the 26th round of a scheduled 45-round match. There would not be another black heavyweight champ until Joe Louis in 1937.
After his release, Johnson made stage appearances, toured with vaudeville companies, fought exhibitions and lived an unbowed life. In 1946, at the age of 68, he died after driving his high-powered Lincoln Zephyr off a curve and into a telephone pole at 70 mph.
Though Jack Johnson's greatest triumphs came almost a century ago, Ken Burns called him "utterly modern."
"Look at the photographs; you'd think somebody's Photoshopped him in there," Burns said. "He's got his bling, and he's got his entourage, and he's got his long coats and fast cars," Burns said. "He's got his fancy cribs; he's got the white women and the women of all races around his arms. He could fit right into this culture.
"Of all the characters that I've gotten to know, he's the only one you could put in a time machine and have him come here and not go absolutely insane. He'd get it right away because he's dimensional; he's the real deal."
Documentarian leads effort to win pardon for Johnson
Ken Burns is leading an effort to win a posthumous presidential pardon for Jack Johnson. On July 13, Burns and the Committee to Pardon Jack Johnson filed a petition with the Justice Department, documenting how the government's decision to indict and convict Johnson in 1912 under the Mann Act -- which forbade the transportation of women from one state to another for immoral purposes -- was racially motivated and discriminatory. If the pardon is granted, it will be only the second posthumous presidential pardon in history.
"We're desperately -- as citizens, not as filmmakers -- trying to get [the pardon] because we were so stunned and so outraged by the virulent racism of the period that we uncovered," Burns said. (The racist language in the film, albeit historical, may prove disconcerting to some.)
One of the most chilling scenes in "Unforgivable Blackness" features Billy Bob Thornton's recitation of a Los Angeles Times editorial that appeared soon after Johnson's victory over James J. Jeffries. Titled "A Word to the Black Man," it warns in part: "Do not swell your chest too much. Do not boast too loudly. Do not be puffed up. Let not your ambition be inordinate or take a wrong direction. Remember you have done nothing at all. You are just the same member of society you were last week. You are on no higher plane, deserve no new consideration, and will get none. . . ."
When Burns took Thornton into a Los Angeles studio, he told the actor, "'Just put your arm around the fellow and put a knife to his throat and now read the quote,' because that's what the quote is: total, violent intimidation."
Burns said when he proposed the pardon campaign, he received immediate bipartisan support from Congress.
He also cited support from "journalists, historians and people in the boxing world," including former champions Sugar Ray Leonard, Bernard Hopkins and John Ruiz; New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer; and former New York mayor David Dinkins.
In October, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced a non-binding sense of the Senate resolution -- which passed unanimously -- urging President Bush to pardon Johnson for "the racially-motivated 1913 conviction that diminished Johnson's athletic, cultural and historic significance and unduly tarnished his reputation." Backers of the presidential pardon campaign are hoping for a decision by March 31 -- Johnson's birthday.
The White House might be sympathetic: For five straight years while governor of Texas, Bush proclaimed March 31 as "Jack Johnson Day."
